Nowadays, music has gotten more expensive and not as good as it used to be. People are finding new ways to get around buying music, and there are an increasing number of ways to listen to your favorite tunes for free. Spotify was probably one of the first music players to appear, advertising over 1,000 songs you could listen to for free. There are two different levels to this player: the free version and the premium version. Free Spotify allows you to listen on your smart phone, tablet, and computer on Wifi. It contains ads, although the wide amount of music contained in this vast library makes up for the nuisance of cheery voices popping up in the middle of your hard rock jam session. Spotify Premium gives you TV access (out of Wifi access), higher quality, and no ads at all for just the small price of ten dollars per month.

Just recently, Spotify reached ten million paid users, meaning ten million people decided to spend that extra $9.99 for just a few extra features when they already had a “bajillion” songs to choose from. Spotify puts many other music players to shame, but after using the free version for six months, people started having issues. The player started limiting the amount of music you could listen to per month. So, basically you had maybe ten hours of music, and once that was used up, you had to do a bunch of crazy stuff to get around that lyric-blocking barrier. Recently, after the update, some people just got kicked out and have been unable to log in since. So, is Spotify really the answer to getting around buying music, even though you are still paying for the amount you would pay for an album each month?

A con is that you have all this music right in front of you, but you do not own any of it. Downloading music is a feature that only comes with Spotify Premium, and when this site finally crashes you will be left with none of the music you fell in love with, because you never actually bought any of it. You will be unable to look back on those memories after your account is gone. The pros to this site are fairly simple — tons and tons of music for you to listen to, explore, and discard without worrying about that $1.29 you spent to get it when you were still hyped up about it. Spotify even gives you requests for what music you may like if you listened to a certain band, although sometimes they may seemed farfetched (how does listening to AWOLNATION and Nirvana get you to Macklemore?… Ah, I guess it makes sense).

Spotify is a great way to discover new music when that song by The Black Keys is not doing it for you anymore. You can “star” it and come back to it when you want to hear it again. That is always the great thing about Spotify, there are lots of easy tips and tricks to stumble over that good old tune again when you have just forgotten all about it, and fall in love with it all over again.

Despite all the ups and downs and rights and lefts to Spotify, it may not actually be for you. There are lots of other options soon to come in other articles, but for now you can check out the Spotify web player at www.spotify.com.